The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission disclosed on Tuesday that, the commission had frozen over 300 unwarranted accounts in forex operating on a peer to peer platform.
The EFCC chairman who revealed this at an interactive discussion held with journalists in Abuja said that the accounts were suspended on Monday following a court order. The trading scheme called ‘p to p’ is an illegal trading scheme that carries its operations beyond the purview of official banking channels, posing as a very high threatto the stability of the naira.
Olukayode further revealed that close to 15billion dollars passed through one of the illicit platforms in the last one year and out side of financial regulations, according to him, the commission took the action to safely guide the foreign market and protect the the nation’s economy, and it has been confirmed that recent efforts have helped strengthen the weak naira.
The 300 forex accounts that were frozen would have led to another crash of the naira if proper action had not been taken, said Olukayode ” we got an order to freeze those accounts , somebody would come and ask us ‘what is your business with forex transaction’ some people are happy, they take pleasure in seeing this country boiling and i have come to realize that in the course of this work, some people want to see things go bad, from bad to worse”
At the press meeting, Olukayode also made promises of ensuring that Yahaya Bello, the embattled former Kogi state governor is prosecuted and swore to resign his position as the chairman of the commission if proper action is not taken on the governor. He also committed to ensuring that everyone who prevented the arrest of the former governor will as well face the law, no matter the attack and campaigns weighed against the EFCC.
Bello who escaped arrest by the anti-graft agency has been made to face arraignment on a 19 count splitting across laundering, breach of trust and misappropriation of funds to the tune of 80.2 billion naira. The EFCC boss noted that Bello was accorded due respect as a former governor when he was being invited in by the commission to clear his name but he declined, according to him, there are clear evidence in court that the former governor illegally alloted as much as 720,00 dollars out of Kogi state to sponsor his child’s education before his exit from the position.
Giving an account of the incident, The chairman emphasized that the EFCC have adequately obeyed the law in trying to bring to answer the allegation, he stated the judgement by Isah Jmil Abdullahi, who authorized the EFCC to bring Bello to court for proper arraignment, he said, ” the particulars of offense are there before the court, go and check it, he moved money directly from the government to Bureau de change, he used it to pay his child’s school fees in advance; dollars. He moved 720,00 dollars in advance, in anticipation that he was going to leave the government house, in a poor state like Kogi, and you want me to close my eyes to that, under the guise that i am being used, used by who? at this stage of my life? by who for crying out loud?
At the end of the discussion, he urged all Nigerians to support the agency , because according to him, the failure of the EFCC is the failure of the country’s fight against financial crimes.
